Our client’s business emerged around 2010-2011 as an e-commerce solution designed to bridge the gap between property management companies and their residents in the United States.
By 2012, the platform was fully operational, enabling property managers to streamline their purchasing processes while offering residents a convenient way to order products tailored to their specific needs, particularly for flooring and paint products.
The initial version of the platform was based on our custom e-commerce monolith. It had all blows and whistles included – category tree, taxonomy, data import and scheduled data export. But the client needed significant platform adaptation to accommodate the unique requirements of the property management industry.
Rather than simply offering products by unit, the platform needed sophistication to handle measurements in square meters and liters, particularly for flooring and paint products.
The system allowed users to specify building structures, apartment layouts, and room configurations to accurately calculate coverage areas and material requirements.
For the storefront experience, Magento 1 was integrated with the custom platform through file import/export mechanisms. This relatively straightforward architecture served the needs of approximately 10-20 property management entities and their network of suppliers effectively in the early years.
The simplicity of this initial solution proved to be one of its strengths, providing reliability and predictability that users appreciated.
A critical aspect of the platform was its sophisticated approval and budget management system, designed specifically for property management operations. Property staff members operated under monthly budget constraints, requiring approval from higher-level managers when expenses exceeded their allocation.
These managers, typically overseeing multiple properties within a management company, had the authority to approve, reject, or edit orders that exceeded budget thresholds.
Similarly, individual companies or properties had order amount limitations, where exceeding predefined spending limits triggered an approval workflow. This multi-tiered approval system gave management companies precise control over spending while maintaining operational flexibility.
The purchasing approval process within the platform
The platform also implemented product-level restrictions through an item approval flow. Certain products or entire categories could be restricted for all properties or specific locations.
These restrictions came in two forms: hard restrictions that completely prevented purchases, and soft restrictions that allowed users to request special approval for specific items. When a soft-restricted item was requested, managers could approve the purchase of specific quantities for individual orders.
Further enhancing supplier integration, the system included functionality to request real-time pricing and availability directly from supplier websites at the point of purchase. This feature required special configuration settings including URLs, login credentials, and passwords, though it occasionally experienced connectivity issues.
By 2016, growing pains became evident when the client returned with concerns about system performance. The most critical issue was the customized shopping cart, which had become painfully slow, taking up to a minute to load.
Investigation revealed the culprit to be heavyweight and poorly optimized SQL queries. Our development team tackled this challenge methodically, rewriting the queries to progressively reduce loading times – first to 30 seconds, then to 10 seconds, and eventually even faster – 2 seconds.
Around this time, a strategic decision was made to migrate to Magento 2. This move was likely motivated by dissatisfaction with the aging original platform and the client’s desire for a more contemporary solution.
By this point, the client had moved away from the original custom platform, having migrated their catalog management entirely to Magento.
The migration to Magento 2 presented an opportunity to address other long-standing pain points. Suppliers had been struggling with the rigid import system, which required manual intervention to process catalog data files.
The development team created a flexible import mechanism that could accommodate various file formats (CSV and XLS), handle different column names and delimiters, and selectively process data according to supplier needs.
Additionally, we implemented an intelligent category mapping system that established correspondence between the platform’s category structure and supplier data. This system not only enabled automatic categorization during imports, but also incorporated logic to find matches automatically, reducing manual mapping work.
A significant turning point came in 2016 when another company acquired the business. This corporate change brought new ambitions and business requirements to the project.
The new owner envisioned expanding the platform’s reach, not only maintaining support for existing property management clients, but also bringing additional customers onto the same infrastructure.
Discussions began about developing a “universal storefront” that could serve this expanded client base. Throughout the phases of development and transition, the team provided ongoing support for the platform, including exploratory work on advanced Punch-out Level 2 and Punch-in capabilities to enhance supplier integration.
We addressed technical issues with the product catalog, resolved supplier requests, and tackled customer problems that typically stemmed from catalog data issues, occasional bugs, or logical inconsistencies in the system.
The project offers several valuable insights for similar e-commerce initiatives:
💡 Simplicity means stability. The initial, more straightforward iteration of the platform performed reliably, reinforcing that unnecessary complexity often undermines system stability and user satisfaction.
💭 Thorough requirements’ analysis is critical. Taking time to distinguish between essential features and nice-to-have elements prevents scope creep and focuses development resources where they provide the most value.
🛠️ Platform customization vs. custom development. Customizing existing platforms like Magento, while initially appealing, can become expensive and cumbersome for highly specialized needs. For truly unique requirements, building from scratch may ultimately be more cost-effective.
🔝 Quality code beats innovation. The project’s success stemmed not from flashy innovation, but from solid, well-written code that fulfilled its intended purpose. This foundation of quality engineering proved more valuable than novel approaches.
📈 Performance optimization directly impacts user satisfaction. The dramatic improvement in shopping cart loading times demonstrated how technical optimizations translate directly to enhanced user experience.
✍️ Is your business facing similar challenges? We can help! Reach out to us via the form below to discuss a custom solution for your catalog.
